You have to appreciate the humor value of fantasy energy projects created by people who don't work for a living, or build actual things, only teach, living on someone else's budget. They used to joke and call Stanford the "Leland Stanford Junior College". Stanford does have its accomplishments, but its not exactly well known for its civil engineers. And designing public utilities is very much a civil engineering project. So here's my comment on the above article.
It's a NICE dream. The idea that there's unlimited calm, clean, renewable energy powered by magical batteries that don't exist but that's okay, right? Because... well, its not clear on that point.
What isn't understood by the man in question is that there's a LOT more energy costs than he realized. And that liquid fuels are efficient ways to power vehicles, compared to batteries.
One of the biggest costs is pumping fresh water to LA so they have water to drink and flush and wash off their driveways during this drought. LA residents really like wasting water to show they're better than the place where the water comes from. This is a point of rage between the state regions. We in the North hate the South for this reason. Hate is the right word, too. But focus on the positives.
Yes, there's sufficient strong reliable wind blowing out of Alaska down the California Coast. However, wind turbines only work well when the wind is extremely stable, without gusts, without turbulence. Gusts and turbulence BREAK wind turbines, viciously, but people who live in Stanford offices don't know this. You have to know a wind turbine mechanic, and I do, to know all the ways they break. You COULD run very large turbines on top of the various coast range ridgelines, though those will certainly kill migratory birds and raptors, which breaks a LOT of really important environmental laws, kills birds and bats very much illegally, and these laws a Stanford professor SHOULD be aware of and following, but somehow doesn't. Somehow he's oblivious to laws he should favor. Funny how that is. This is exactly the sort of hypocrisy that professors typically exhibit, and we know that hypocrisy is evil, remember? But set that aside. For now.
You could put up a lot of really big wind turbines, and hire about four or five thousand people to look after them. Twenty-five thousand turbines will cost a fortune, and the turbines will cost a fortune a year to maintain, and the energy has to be transmitted, in the proper phase because out of phase wind turbines actually remove energy from the grid, and that's not an exaggeration. Like I said, I know a wind turbine mechanic. It's a real problem. When these get out of sequence, they reduce the power supply, not increase it. People who sell wind turbines don't tell you this, however. That's a serious issue you should think hard about. The other thing they don't tell you is that you need 3 times the height of the turbine between it and the next one to reduce turbulence which wrecks them and reduces maintenance costs.
Social costs of air pollution? What? When the general public are all smoking dope or sucking down cigarettes? No. That's ridiculous. CARB bans offroad motorcycles on the highways. No 2-strokes on the road, other than the little 49cc scooters. And even those are likely to be banned at any time by opinionated bigots who hate the poor, the people likely to ride scooters because they can't afford a car. Those are the ones who ride in other states. The poor. Often people with a DUI, a drunk driver who has lost their drivers license. Those are the ones with scooters and can't afford to buy electric cars for $65K. And drive further than 12 miles to their jobs, so can't bicycle to it. They must have an affordable way to get there and get home, and for most, public transit won't work.
Solar panels on the rooftops? Yes, yes that will happen. When the price is RIGHT, cheap enough, and the power grid is so unreliable it is worth paying to install panels and setting up the switches so there's batteries charging so when the grid crashes for an hour or two or ten, you still have your lights and your fridge and freezer, which is such a large part of civilization, right there. Libraries will be more valuable then. A book takes very little energy to read. Good thing I'm becoming a librarian. But yes, solar panels on rooftops makes sense, and I think it will happen when it makes financial sense.
Better, hybrid solar panels, using a cooling system to preheat water going into hot water heaters, and thus cool the solar photovoltaic cell so it doesn't burn up, and exchange the valuable heat for a more useful format, like hot water to heat your home or bathe in. Bathing is important to civilization. And cooling is important and beneficial to PV solar reliability and home heating.
They don't mention electric trams which they should. Overhead grid wiring is scalable in the way that batteries aren't. They use those for trams and buses and many different kinds of commuter trains.
The numbers of plants they've listed is sadly absurd. For one, they want 72 geothermal plants. There's ONE in California, and it doesn't work. The one I know of that does work is steam vents east of Reno. And that's in Nevada. You need a working volcano to have a working geothermal site, and that's a tall order. Just drilling down into the crust is naïve and wrong PROVEN to be wrong by extensive documentation at the test site at The Geysers. The one where the power generation stops working shortly after trying the injection wells. Why? It is because rocks are insulators.
3400 tide turbines. Really. That blocks off most coves, destroying the coast. Unless these are free floating turbines, which only kill anything that goes through them, rather than requiring dams on coves and running the tide water through the turbines. And 5000 wave buoy generators. Those work by being lifted and dropped by passing waves. Maintenance costs on the cables are serious.
1200 solar concentrator plants. That's a lot. There's two in California right now. 1200 means putting them so many places they become a serious threat to aviation. Its the LIGHT, extremely bright, and blinding even at high altitude. The existing ones are FAA regulated. The moving mirrors also require lots of maintenance, and water for the steam boilers which power the turbines. Its not a free lunch. You have to pay a bunch of specialists to keep it working. Men with families, retirement funds, pregnant wives and babies. That means schools and hospitals.
All of these methods are tradeoffs, with big costs. There's no mention of the pumps to push water around the state, and those use a huge amount of energy. There's no mention of the impact of dividing the state on these expensive plans. There's no mention of how many businesses flee the state rather than be taxed to pay for them, or the loss of the poor and middle class for the same reasons. If the state is only rich people, paying for all this, how will they pay for it if there's nobody else here? And why would they?
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